


Hypothermia

by Tejoxys



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Body Horror, Drama, Gen, Highly Suspect Thermodynamics, Hurt/Comfort, Magical Illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 04:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10654485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tejoxys/pseuds/Tejoxys
Summary: A long, long time ago, someone over on rotgficprompts.tumblr.com asked for a fic where Jack Frost gets too cold. The original prompt:"There are tons of fics where Jack gets a 'fever' (i.e., his temperature goes up too high for a winter spirit).But what if Jack gets too cold?Jack’s powers do something that causes his temperature to drop to a dangerously low level and he begins to freeze from the inside out, so someone has to figure out how to reverse the effect before it’s too late."





	Hypothermia

_What the fuck did I do?_

It was a good thought. If Jack could still have that thought, it meant nothing inside his head was broken, right? The constant whipping wind had dulled his sense of reality; that sickening crunch a moment ago may not even have been a real sound. Whatever it was, the way its echo sizzled through him meant his nerves were still working, probably. That was good. He was fine, he just needed to land. Not think about how very high up he was, ignore the crystalline fog inside his eyes, and trust gravity.

Stop feeding the connection his brain had already made between breaking into a new layer of the atmosphere, and crashing through the ice.

Fine. Just fine.

For an emergency landing, it was unusually graceful. But he couldn’t feel the ground, or see the sky.

*

Bunny’s message was garbled, flowering plants erupting and withering around North’s office too quickly for him to find them in the reference book. Somewhere between rhododendrons for danger and snowdrops for Jack, he gave up deciphering the specifics, threw a full arsenal of ready-to-use charms into a sack, and bolted for the Warren.

He was glad he hadn’t waited. Jack’s staff lay abandoned. Bunnymund sat forlornly in the grass, nose gone dry, gazing at a new-formed door in the wall that was rapidly developing hairline cracks. His fur stood out strangely on one arm and along his side where the skin had been seared by something cold. North read the situation quickly and went to work, shoring up the magic that kept the door standing.

Bunny didn’t blink until North finished up and knelt beside him.

“There. Is all reinforced,” North said kindly. “You had no time to plan, I see in your work. I forgive you for using flower codes after I told you I can’t remember them all.”

Bunny let out a shaky breath, a flicker of temper coming back into his eyes. “You might bother to learn. What am I supposed to use, carrier pigeons? You weren’t there, you didn’t see it. Sweet hell, the field I found him in—you know what it’s going to take to repair the topsoil over there?”

North moved to inspect Bunny’s arm. “Ah, ah—I won’t touch. Be still.” Bunny quieted. “To do such injury to you… Bunny, why is Jack locked in a pit?”

“You called the others, right?” Bunny sniffed. “Tooth may’ve gotten my message, if she was at home. What about Sandy?”

“Guys!”

Toothiana had found them. She was all sharp movements, clutching a tooth box, her feathers all puffed up. Several shell-shocked fairies flanked her. Sandy drifted along behind them. “I was going to alert Sandy anyway, and then we saw the aurora. Aster, what were those hydrangeas about? Where’s Jack? Oh, you’re hurt!”

Sandy looked equally worried, the flurry of sand above his head a mess of snowflakes, stars, and flowers.

“Listen, I’ll patch myself up later,” said Bunny. “This is an emergency. Jack’s in there, I had to drop him in and seal it up ‘cos I couldn’t touch him anymore. I would’ve thought we could let it run its course, but he’s only getting colder. Dirt can’t hold him. Stone’s not really cutting it, either.”

Toothiana put a hand to her mouth. “Hydrangeas,” she breathed. “He’s not aware of any of this, is he?”

“No. No, probably not. North, can you help me get us in there? Safely? You’ve got to see this for yourselves.”

*

Careful choreography allowed them to open the door and squeeze through without letting too much bitter air seep into the Warren. North covered Toothiana and Bunny with the mantle of warmth he used to protect himself at the Pole. Sandy didn’t need it, burning right through spells and the cold the way he did everything.

The room glittered like a massive geode. Moisture that had been leached from the earth stood out in delicate spicules of ice, all pointing toward the center. Not even Sandy’s gentle light could make the room seem warmer. The visitors’ breath barely had time to fog; they could feel the air clawing at their lungs, desperate for water. The walls creaked under the same assault.

Jack sat hunched in the center of the floor, sagging as though he’d been propped up and left to fall, like a doll whose limbs wouldn’t hold a pose. His eyes stared, moon-white; he gave no flicker of awareness that the others were there. Now and then, a pained breath heaved out from somewhere deep. Tooth cried out. North swore, instinctively gathering power to extend the warming spell over Jack-

Bunny nearly body-checked North in his rush to stop him. “Nonono! Don’t use warmth, it makes him go colder, that’s how I—unh.” He broke away, favoring his side. “’S how I got hurt.”

North’s voice was short. “Then what do we use? Did you give him water?”

“So he can make more ice? Look, whatever’s gotten into him, it’s set to devour anything we throw at him.”

“He’s protecting himself,” Tooth cut in. Her eyes were on the tooth box she’d brought along. She traced the patterns tenderly, but they remained dark. Her eyelashes were frosted. “Or his power is. I thought maybe I could get through, with these. But I think-” her voice broke. “Do you see that breathing pattern? His brain’s shutting down. What he thinks is his brain, anyway; you know what I mean. He’s beyond memories.”

That stopped the speculation for all of five seconds.

“Then we just-” North started.

“We don’t ‘just’ anything,” Bunny snapped. “D’you see him on the floor? D’you see those runes keeping him down? I had to do that. He was bashing himself against the walls, otherwise.”

“Well, we can’t stay in here much longer,” Tooth said, her face tight. “I mean… he’s one of us now, right? Maybe we do have to let it run its course. He can’t die this way. It’ll keep going until it can’t get any worse, and then he’ll heal.”

Bunny flexed his injured paw. “And if he comes back different? Tooth, he tried to kill me. He can’t keep on like this; he’ll be a menace.”

He jumped when Sandy patted his arm. Sandy flashed a medic symbol and a string of z’s and question marks.

The others watched him approach Jack. Dreamsand swirled, prodding gently. Sandy relayed what he found: Eyes – blind. Hearing – dead. Touch – dead. He tried sending Jack to sleep.

Jack’s body wrenched away from the touch of dreamsand, and kicked Sandy square in the chest. The room’s temperature dropped sharply. A dull thud of changing air pressure crackled in their ears and brought down a rain of debris. Someone screamed.

“Tooth’s right, we can’t stay in here,” Bunny gasped as they picked themselves up.

Sandy, still clutching his chest, gave him a look of pure disbelief and shook his head. Bunny flung up his paws. “Well, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do! Ow.”

Sandy’s urgent dance of symbols moved too fast for even Tooth, but everyone caught Pitch’s image among them.

Everyone burst out talking at the same time.

“We should have known! Nothing this awful could’ve-”

“-drag him down here and make him undo whatever he-”

“-comfort Jack? But how, if we can’t talk to him or touch him?”

Sandy ignored them and drifted closer to where Jack huddled, motionless once more. He sent tendrils of dreamsand into the walls, into the shadows of dying tree roots and cracking stones. - _Come out, Pitch. I’ll keep them off you._ -

A bitter voice answered him, rolling along the ceiling. “You mean you don’t agree that this was somehow my fault?”

Pitch stepped out from Jack’s shadow. He bared his teeth at the shouts of surprise and anger, and rounded on Sandy alone. “Well, you’re right; this serves none of my interests. He’s becoming like you—all power and no space for fear. I should destroy him right now.”

Sandy held up a hand to the others and showed them every possible symbol for NO. They obeyed, barely, fading into squabbling background noise. The two oldest immortals had no focus for anything but each other. - _Too bad you can’t,_ \- Sandy replied steadily. He looked Pitch up and down, taking in his deliberately calm breathing and disheveled hair. - _As if you wanted to. As if the only reason you’ve been hiding in the walls is to see them all afraid. Do you know what happened to Jack?_ -

Pitch’s eyes flickered. “I saw the whole thing, not that it matters. Did you call me out for interrogation? It won’t help.”

- _No, not at all. Jack will do the talking after you retrieve him for us._ -

Pitch took a step back, poised to flee. Sandy softened his tone. - _Listen. He’ll call down the void of space if nothing’s done. The person we knew will be gone, and unless we cast him out—way out—the world will end in winter. He’ll fade out with the rest of us, and then… Just you and winter on a barren rock, forever, Pitch. How does that sound?_ -

“You know I once wanted exactly that?”

Sandy shook his head. - _Not exactly that. I know you two play together. You need people, much as you hate that you do. I can’t make you care and I can’t make you help, but if you want to keep your world as halfway-decent as it is, you’ll act._ -

Pitch’s lip was curling by the second word, but Sandy had hit the key points: What is Jack to me? Why should I help any of you? What’s in it for me?

“Why don’t you fix him yourself?” he asked, just to make Sandy say it.

- _I can’t._ -

“Hmm. And what am I supposed to do?”

- _He still has fear. Make him feel it, make him fight back—he must come back to himself._ \- Sandy frowned. - _Most importantly… you have to enjoy doing this. If you can’t, it’s no good._ -

Pitch had already begun stalking the perimeter of the room, eyes fixed on Jack. “I don’t suppose you’ll lend me a little sand to even the playing field? This is a lot to ask, weak as I am.”

That was the closest he’d get to a yes. Sandy spared a nervous glance at the others as Pitch kicked away Bunnymund’s runes. - _Don’t make me laugh. You’ll feed handsomely, if he doesn’t maim you first._ -

Pitch wasn’t even listening. Sandy urged the others toward the exit. They were still talking over each other—“There’s no way we can trust-” “-has to be some kind of spell, or-?”

- _Seal it,_ \- Sandy repeated several times. - _Seal them in._ -

They piled out onto the grass. Another thud of negative air pressure nearly caught Toothiana’s trailing feathers in the door. Bunnymund closed up the protesting earth, leaving the frozen room behind them with no exit and no light.

*

“This is making me very uncomfortable,” Bunnymund announced for probably the fifth time.

Sandy’s explanations were well over with; Bunny’s injuries were salved and bandaged; tea had been laid out on blankets in the grass where the four of them sat waiting, wrapped in more blankets. Toothiana was nursing a miserable cough; a trio of fairies attended Jackson Overland’s tooth box while she tried to relax and drink as much as possible. Bunny’s attention kept wandering as he communicated with the Warren, monitoring the fight taking place in the unseen room.

North sighed wearily. “Just… keep watching. Pitch can do nothing we would not permit, given the circumstances. He fears our punishment; were we to step in, he knows this is no time to show weakness in front of Jack.”

Bunny shivered involuntarily. “You’re sure Pitch knows we’re watching his every move?” he asked again. Toothiana wriggled up against his side to stop him picking at his bandages.

North nodded. “He certainly knows. I feel him questioning this good deed, such as it is.”

Silence fell. Everyone looked to Sandy, but he had nothing to add. He had dozed off, fine tendrils of sand drifting between him and the dividing wall, a sad frown of concentration on his face.

“Is he watching or-?”

“Shhh.”


End file.
